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  #31   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 25-05-2011, 22:27
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneYoung View Post
why isn't there a sister thread called, Why Losers Lose?
Because no one is interested in how they can change their methodology in order to have a greater chance of losing.
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Unread 25-05-2011, 22:38
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

As opposed to answering the poorly formed literal question posed in the thread title, I'll go with a more generic "Why do teams fail to succeed". For the purposes of this exercise, let's define success as "producing a robot with competes at a below average to average level". Many teams have higher goals, while some teams have completely different goals, but this is a good basis to form a question of success around.

This is just snapshot of some of the more common reasons, many of which have been touched upon already in this thread.

- Building before strategically designing and analyzing the game: "How can you build a robot if you don't know what it's supposed to do"
- A failure to honestly and realistically evaluate one's resources (resources in this context are defined as time, experience, fabrication abilities and money), thus making you think you're capable of doing more than you can do.
- A failure to properly design around one's resources
- Over complicated robots: "The jack of all trades is the master of none"
- Lack of effort/desire/focus
- Lack of practice
- A failure to strategize
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Unread 25-05-2011, 23:49
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

Giving up. Quitting. Placing blame rather than finding solutions.

FIRST is about problem-solving. Problem-solving requires persistence and an open mind.

If you lack those traits, losing comes easy.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 00:11
davidthefat davidthefat is offline
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

I think another aspect is the attitude and perspective. I would personally call this season a failure for me, but others on the team think that it was a tremendous success. Now, we both had the same season, but yet, how can we have such polar opinions? It is a matter of perspective. I have failed on a personal level. I saw this season as a failure because of several reasons.

First, we relied too much on luck. Luck got a fairly far, in fact, the farthest we have gotten in 11 years. But that is why I consider this season a failure. Disregard all numbers and ranking. I, personally, did not do all I can do to insure a better robot. I did not acquire the trust from the mentors to allow me to implement any autonomy into the robot. In fact, I had only uploaded code only once during the competition. Mentors did not trust code. I call that a failure because I failed to gain their trust.

Another reason was due to the more obvious. I had failed to control the arm efficiently enough. My personal record was 2 tubes during any given match. I considered that a failure. I promised a logo, but due to technical difficulties, the arm was not given the limelight. Perhaps it was not all in my control, but I bare the blunt of the blame.

Lastly, one of the biggest reasons were "diplomatic" reasons. Perhaps, I have made a few enemies in the team. I am very outspoken and opinionated. Which in itself is great in my honest opinion, but the flaw was in the execution of those opinions.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 01:46
JaneYoung JaneYoung is offline
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Karthik View Post
As opposed to answering the poorly formed literal question posed in the thread title, I'll go with a more generic "Why do teams fail to succeed".
I was hoping someone would recognize this.



Jane
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Unread 26-05-2011, 03:41
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

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Originally Posted by waialua359 View Post
Time.

Resources, funding, mentorship, partnerships, collaboration, etc. etc. are the main differences between teams that win and teams that lose. Not only from a competition standpoint, but overall learning objectives/experiences.
Teams in general are always working towards a better ____ on the above list, which in turn alleviates time.
Being inefficient with your time is a relative term dependent on how much _________ you have.
This exactly. Last year, we got the strategy right in week one and built an absolutely beautiful Logomotion scoring mechanism. However, because we finished it after the crate deadline, we didn't get to use it at the tournament. If we had had more mentors, more partnerships, more student experience, or a bigger library of design drafts, we could have performed a lot better than we did (i.e. had more than a drivetrain and a rather sketchy minibot). Practice and strategy can alleviate some of your problems--I credit our very experienced driver with making us as successful a defensive robot as we were--but they can't make up for running out of time. We lost before the season even started, really.

Just goes to show how important the "off" season is.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 04:22
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneYoung View Post
Why do losers lose?
Because people are convinced winning is *actually* what Charlie Sheen does. When that's your interpretation of winning, you are destined to fail... epically.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 08:33
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

The robot is actually a potted plant.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 08:46
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

Our team frequently discusses the failure that we had as rookies in 1995 that lead to a judges award called "Best Execution of an Alternative (Losing) Strategy". This was given to us because we created an overly complicated catapult to launch the ball through the uprights that formed the goal, the crowd cheered every time they saw us score and people loved the design. The problem was is was not a fast or effective way to score. The best way to score that year was to quickly swing the ball back and forth through the uprights. We had that idea but got so wrapped around the axel thinking that method was easy to defend that we spent all build making an undefendable scorer that took half the match to reset.

Focusing on the wrong part of the game will get you every time. As Karthik said above you have to know how to play the game before you design so that you know what to build and where to focus your effort.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 09:01
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

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Originally Posted by davidthefat View Post
I think another aspect is the attitude and perspective. I would personally call this season a failure for me, but others on the team think that it was a tremendous success. Now, we both had the same season, but yet, how can we have such polar opinions? It is a matter of perspective. I have failed on a personal level. I saw this season as a failure because of several reasons.

First, we relied too much on luck. Luck got a fairly far, in fact, the farthest we have gotten in 11 years. But that is why I consider this season a failure. Disregard all numbers and ranking. I, personally, did not do all I can do to insure a better robot. I did not acquire the trust from the mentors to allow me to implement any autonomy into the robot. In fact, I had only uploaded code only once during the competition. Mentors did not trust code. I call that a failure because I failed to gain their trust.

Another reason was due to the more obvious. I had failed to control the arm efficiently enough. My personal record was 2 tubes during any given match. I considered that a failure. I promised a logo, but due to technical difficulties, the arm was not given the limelight. Perhaps it was not all in my control, but I bare the blunt of the blame.

Lastly, one of the biggest reasons were "diplomatic" reasons. Perhaps, I have made a few enemies in the team. I am very outspoken and opinionated. Which in itself is great in my honest opinion, but the flaw was in the execution of those opinions.
Wow, sounds EXACTLY like my season.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 12:26
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

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Originally Posted by SuperNerd256 View Post
You obviously don't get it. There are no losers in FIRST! I say that anyone who builds a robot out of a kit of parts, in just 6 weeks, to solve a complicated task is definitely a winner!
I don't exactly agree with this statement, but by this definition, there are still teams that loose. I know because I've been there.

Why do some teams loose to this degree? I have some pretty strong views on this issue

Internal Culture: Teams don't achieve because they don't demand it. They don't build the mentality that powerhouse teams have: that to get something, you have to work hard for it. Want to know the rules? You've got to study them. Want a flawless grabber? You've got to put in the hours to prototype it. Want a fantastic sponsor? Hunt them down. If a team doesn't teach these ideas to their students, they tend to get lazy.

I think that this one, more than anything else, is the root of the issue. Everything else just feeds into it.

Denial: I think this is the root cause of some of the "Student built vs. Mentor Built" flames. If a team creates a robot that is not as effective as one of the powerhouses, it is easy to marginalize the achievement of the powerhouse, by suggesting that they didn't follow the spirit of the program. It's hard to put in the hard work required to reach the level of the powerhouses. And a team that's cut corners through the build process is likely to cut corners here as well. If this happens, however, these teams begin to feel that they're the best thing in the world, and have no reason to improve.

Giving up: There's a view out there that powerhouses have everything come easily to them: that their sponsors walked up to them and handed out money, that their robots work on the first try, and that they win events without really trying. When these things don't happen to a team, they get distressed. If they have a hard time securing work space or funding, they panic, rather than work for it. And as far as robots go, many teams schedule their builds assuming everything will go perfectly, and when it doesn't, they fail.

And many other issues mentioned in this thread. But these ones are the biggest that I've seen firsthand.
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Last edited by Joe G. : 26-05-2011 at 12:33.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 14:12
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

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Originally Posted by AdamHeard View Post
My personal favorite.

You make a custom drivetrain that performs worse than and/or is less reliable than the kop drivetrain.
And then my favorite corollary:

The only part your team CAD'ed and machined on your robot is your wheels.

I've lost track of all the robots I've seen over the years that have CNC-machined wheels from billet aluminum stock but then have a superstructure and manipulator that's either non-existent or cannot score.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 14:53
Ian Curtis Ian Curtis is offline
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

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Originally Posted by Peter Matteson View Post
Our team frequently discusses the failure that we had as rookies in 1995 that lead to a judges award called "Best Execution of an Alternative (Losing) Strategy". This was given to us because we created an overly complicated catapult to launch the ball through the uprights that formed the goal, the crowd cheered every time they saw us score and people loved the design. The problem was is was not a fast or effective way to score. The best way to score that year was to quickly swing the ball back and forth through the uprights. We had that idea but got so wrapped around the axel thinking that method was easy to defend that we spent all build making an undefendable scorer that took half the match to reset.
That sounds familiar. We cheered after every hurdle... not because we scored 8 points, but because the retracting lift meant we hadn't stripped another planetary...

On a related thought, I wonder what the maximum sustainable number of "winning" FRC teams is. It is one thing to support an FRC team, we've seen that 2,000 or so and growing can be adequately supported simultaneously. It is quite another thing to sustain an FRC team competing/designing at the level of say Team IFI. In a town with one machine shop, they can't have an 8 hour turnaround for everyone...

Even if a team isn't top tier, I think there's a big difference in resources consumed for a basic rookie team with little engineering support and a consistent top 8 team. It's a much larger drain, and I wonder if that tipping point (the community can't support all of their teams at the level they could otherwise compete at) has been reached in some areas with a high density of teams.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 15:04
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

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Originally Posted by Karthik View Post
- A failure to honestly and realistically evaluate one's resources (resources in this context are defined as time, experience, fabrication abilities and money), thus making you think you're capable of doing more than you can do.
- A failure to properly design around one's resources
This is the one thing that I see kills more teams than any other.

Lots of people asked why we used wood this year and I expect they were looking for some elaborate technical answer but the bottom line was it was a quick available and free resource.
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Unread 26-05-2011, 15:45
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Re: Why Losers Lose?

Poor build quality/tolerances

This nearly crushed us this year. Nearly every problem this year was caused by this. We had all these unexpected part deflections and part interferences. It severely delayed our build schedule because we had to fix so many parts. During competition, we were constantly mending our robot trying to be proactive on repairs. It can be extremely draining. This made it a "lost" by our count because a critical design quality we seek is durability. I find years that we meet the design objective that my students found the year much more enjoyable and rewarding because they have time to learn other things instead of constantly relearning the same failure over and over again.

On the other hand, Its nice to know that this was the root cause 90 percent of our issues this year instead of having a huge collection of problems. This aligns with building within your means. I failed to realize the demographics have been changing in our team over the years. We simply no longer have enough students willing to take woodshop or a JC machine shop class. I didn't realize designs that worked one year won't necessarily work again again because the students are different. I realize I have to recognize our build means year to year better or implement training procedures to standardize our build means.

More on the definition of losing. I was kind of shocked by our OPR rank. I thought we should have been ranked much lower. This subject has been touched on before but it seems that a large pool of teams simply can't play a single aspect of the game. Its heartbreaking to see these statistics, and more so considering how close our team felt we would be if we fell behind on our repairs and missed a match or two. I guess I would say we were not winning but we were not losing either. Perhaps as a community we are losing with so many teams not able to play the game at all.
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